In June 2001, Everett Stephens was assigned 15 college students and challenged to improve First Tennessee's direct sales efforts, which were bringing in less than $1 million in annual revenue. It was an experiment, says the vp of direct sales. Not anymore. In 2003, his group pulled in revenue of $6.8 million and now has 102 agents using inbound and outbound calling, e-mail and lead generation powered by Concerto Software. Everett's relentless and methodical focus on the mechanics and minutiae of direct sales helped propel one campaign from generating $72 of revenue per agent hour to $585 per hour in only six months.
USB: What's your strategy for the direct-sales group?
Stephens: The exciting thing about this is it can be an incubation point for new business or services. You can test specific products and offers to specific customer segments before you invest the marketing dollars to bring it to a larger scale. You can launch a small mailing followed by a phone call and you can track the responses. If you find that you're only converting a very small percent, then one of two things is happening: [either something is amiss in the customer segmentation] or, more often than not, it's an agent-based issue that the message is not being communicated adequately.
USB: How often do you review the scripts?
Stephens: We can use that message to help monitor and track the results on a day-to-day basis. With scripting you can measure the drop-off points in conversation effectively and use it to evolve the customer communication. If you've only gotten beyond page one five percent of the time, chances are something's not effective in that script. Your scripting is your game plan, but you've got to have an agent base who's skilled and comfortable enough to not create a negative customer experience. If you go scripting alone, you're going to create robots, a very cold customer experience. You've got to be very effective at establishing rapport. But you've got to be nimble and flexible. That's one of the key rules here: Do not force-feed a customer a product of the day. Your agents need to have depth to their conversation. So if you find the customer is not responding to an offer, be prepared to support another product that might be more appropriate.
USB: How targeted are your campaigns?
Stephens: We can zero in right down to a specific customized campaign to support one specific zip code for one specific product. Our regional personnel are empowered to make decisions to succeed in their individual markets. A lot of our local regions are saying, "We've got X customer base we would like you to support for financial planning, or an investment offer." We will support that strategy by customizing campaigns specifically for markets.
USB: And you use outbound calling?
Stephens: You'll always be driving inbound traffic, that's a given. But we can also support that through an outbound calling effort to a targeted and segmented list. A CD mailing might go to 200,000 people, but you're going to get optimal lift by calling the top 20 percent to 30 percent of that.
USB: How is your budget determined?
Stephens: The direct-sales group is supposed to operate on a zero-line budget. How do you run a multi-million dollar organization with no budget? We sell our services internally. So you've got to treat those departments and regions like valued shareholders. It keeps you accountable to your fellow employees.
USB: Are there other keys to success?
Stephens: Quite often, when you create a marketing offer, something that sounded like a great idea will receive lackluster results. Then people will spend a lot of time trying to understand why it broke, as opposed to figuring out how it can succeed. If it was a good idea and followed sound logic, chances are we've just got to create a path for it to succeed. I can honestly say that we've yet to give up on one particular program. Financial planning is an example. Initially, it sounded like a good idea.
But three years ago, when I first tried offering financial planning, we learned that just because a customer agrees to set an appointment doesn't mean they're necessarily going to show. And if we would've given in to the feedback at the time, we probably would've abandoned the campaign. But we recognized the fact that customers were responding positively on the front end. So you've got to create a value equation between that set appointment and that kept appointment. You need something that weighs in the customer mind that this plan is significant enough and offers the type of advice they need, so they'd better show up.
We had to figure out what that message was going to be, what was going to make these appointments sticky. ...Early on, our show-rate was somewhere around 32 to 34 percent. Now our show-rate is approaching 72 to 75 percent.
